CHICAGO — Graduate students at the University of Chicago voted overwhelmingly to unionize following a ballot count held Thursday by the National Labor Relations Board, the latest such vote in a swell of organizing at universities across the country.
The U of C graduate students’ vote comes on the heels of a union victory in January at Northwestern University, where graduate students are also represented by the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America. In recent months, graduate students at the University of Southern California and Yale also have voted to unionize.
U of C graduate students voted 1,696 to 155 to unionize, according to NLRB records.
The new bargaining unit will comprise about 3,200 graduate students.
“We are now very excited about what’s next — bargaining and how we can improve our working conditions,” said Valay Agarawal, a second-year graduate student in the chemistry department and the communications secretary for the union.
In a message to the university community Friday, Provost Ka Yee C. Lee wrote that the university would bargain in good faith with the union “with the goal of supporting the continued academic success of all graduate students.”
“I am thankful to everyone who engaged in this process, especially the students who voted, whether they voted for or against unionization,” Lee wrote.
Graduate students at the university are organizing to improve their wages and working conditions, including issues relating to benefits, grievance procedures and support for international students.
Agarawal said some graduate students struggle to afford to live in Hyde Park, where the university is located, on their current stipends. The minimum annual stipend for graduate students is $33,000, according to the university, and will increase to $37,000 next school year.
Graduate students at U of C first voted to unionize in 2017. But after that vote, the university was one of several institutions that asked the NLRB to reconsider its landmark 2016 decision that found graduate students at private universities were employees eligible for unionization. Fearing an unfavorable decision from a Republican-controlled labor board, the graduate student union withdrew from the NLRB process in 2018 . They went on strike in 2019 to push the university to formally recognize their union.
Graduate students filed for union representation with the NLRB once more in November.
“We are workers and we deserve to be treated like workers,” Agarawal said.
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